AUW Updates

Back to Posts

Asian University for Women honors Founding Chancellor, Cherie Blair as Doctor of Justice

Posted on January 31, 2025

Written by AUW

Asian University for Women honors Founding Chancellor, Cherie Blair as Doctor of Justice

During AUW’s 11th Commencement on January 8th 2025, Mrs Cherie Blair, the University’s Founding Chancellor, was named Doctor of Justice (honoris causa) for her commitments to human rights and gender equality, her citation given on the day can be found in full below.
Mrs. Blair receiving the award accompanied on stage by Dr. Rubana Huq and Mr Kamal Ahmad.
The great South African writer Alan Paton wrote a somewhat unnoticed book called, Ah, But This Land is Beautiful.  The main protagonist in this book, part fiction, part history, is an Indian girl named Prem.  Freed from the grip of years of indentured servitude, Prem’s family had pulled itself up, and over the years had become quite successful, financially and socially, within the Indian community of Durban.  But then in 1952 came the Defiance Campaign against Unjust Laws, the largest scale non-violent resistance ever seen in South Africa and the first campaign pursued jointly by all racial groups in the rigidly color divided South Africa of those days and, probably, still today to some extent.  To the complete shock of her parents, this 18-year-old Prem, the pride and joy of her family, decides to join the Defiance Campaign.  She chooses to go to the Durban Municipal Reference Library which was clearly marked for “WHITES ONLY”, “Blankees Alleen” in Afrikaans, and picks up a book to read.  Prem is arrested for violating the racial laws and is imprisoned.  She had made it clear that she was NOT to be freed by payment of any bail.  Prem repeats these acts which result in her returning to the prison cells each time.  Her bereaved father finally realizes that the times have changed. What was true for his compliant sisters was not going to be true for Prem.   For “Prem (was) in love with justice”.  An 18-year-old young woman was in love with justice and nothing could sway her from it, even the hardship of repeated incarceration in a South African penal facility or the promise of a comfortable life that her family could offer her if she chose a different path.

I don’t know what prompts a person to fall in love in the quest for justice.  But I thought I would mention this story in honoring a very special person, Cherie Blair, famous Barrister, King’s Counsel, holder of many other accolades the world over,  wife of a three-time Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and of course,  the Founding Chancellor of the Asian University for Women, for at least two reasons:  like Prem, she has had a life-long commitment to justice –  Her love for justice did not lead her to prison but certainly there were occasions which were uncomfortable; and like Prem and in spite of being a prominent lawyer, she knows that some laws, some acts of even a well-meaning state, are simply and patently unjust and must be fought on all grounds, in court and on the streets and maybe even in the universities or on buses as Rosa Parks did some years after Prem’s Defiance in the Durban Municipal Library.

I will mention one particular moment that showed Mrs. Blair’s commitment to justice, even if it appeared as an uncomfortable truth:  In 2002 when she was still in 10 Downing Street, appearing with Queen Rania of Jordan in a charity appeal for Palestinians, she told reporters:  “As long as young people feel they have got no hope but to blow themselves up you are never going to make progress.”  Immediately, there was a noisy reaction to what struck many of us as self-evident truth.  For the past two years, the Asian University for Women has been struggling to get 200 students out of Gaza.  There has been one challenge after another that has restricted our ability to deliver on this promise.  At every obstacle, we have conferred with Mrs. Blair, and she has offered her counsel as well as her signature outreach that has proven to be so effective.

She took on the role of the Founding Chancellor of the Asian University for Women more than 15 years ago in the same spirit of finding space for truth and justice.  She has an uncanny ability to leverage her position of power and influence for the good and she has shared that ability so generously, year after year, for the benefit of the Asian University for Women.  We have a long way to go to successfully build this institution and ensure that it can effectively serve its purpose but we have also come some distance.  Nearly 2000 women have graduated from this institution already and we are constantly at work in envisioning how to remake it.  The distance that we have already travelled would not have been possible without Mrs. Blair’s unwavering support.

Cherie Blair, the first person in her family to enter university, a champion of human rights, of women’s rights and education, a woman who is in love with justice, the Asian University for Women honors you by conferring a Doctor of Justice, honoris causa, for your myriad contributions to make this world more just, more humane, more equal.

Congratulations!